This is the first installment of â€œIf It Happened There,â€ a regular feature in which American events are described using the tropes and tone normally employed by the American media to describe events in other countries.

WASHINGTON, United Statesâ€”The typical signs of state failure arenâ€™t evident on the streets of this sleepy capital city. Beret-wearing colonels have not yet taken to the airwaves to declare martial law. Money-changers are not yet buying stacks of useless greenbacks on the street.

But the pleasant autumn weather disguises a government teetering on the brink. Because, at midnight Monday night, the government of this intensely proud and nationalistic people will shut down, a drastic sign of political dysfunction in this moribund republic.

The capitalâ€™s rival clans find themselves at an impasse, unable to agree on a measure that will allow the American state to carry out its most basic functions. While the factions have come close to such a shutdown before, opponents of President Barack Obamaâ€™s embattled regime now appear prepared to allow the government to be shuttered over opposition to a controversial plan intended to bring the nationâ€™s health care system in line with international standards.

Six years into his rule, Obamaâ€™s position can appear confusing, even contradictory. Though the executive retains control of the countryâ€™s powerful intelligence service, capable of the extrajudicial execution of the regimeâ€™s opponents half a world away, the presidentâ€™s efforts to govern domestically have been stymied in the legislature by an extremist rump faction of the main opposition party.

The current rebellion has been led by Sen. Ted Cruz, a young fundamentalist lawmaker from the restive Texas region, known in the past as a hotbed of separatist activity. Activity in the legislature ground to a halt last week for a full day as Cruz insisted on performing a time-honored American demonstration of stamina and self-denial, which involved speaking for 21 hours, quoting liberally from science fiction films and childrenâ€™s books. The gesture drew wide media attention, though its political purpose was unclear to outsiders.

With hours remaining until the government of the worldâ€™s richest nation runs out of money, attention now focuses on longtime opposition leader John Boehner, under pressure from both the regime and the radical elements of his own movement, who may be the only political figure with the standing needed to end the standoff.

While the countryâ€™s most recent elections were generally considered to be free and fair (despite threats against international observers), the current crisis has raised questions in the international community about the regimeâ€™s ability to govern this complex nation of 300 million people, not to mention its vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Americans themselves are starting to ask difficult questions as well. As this correspondentâ€™s cab driver put it, while driving down the poorly maintained roads that lead from the airport, â€œDo these guys have any idea what theyâ€™re doing to the country?â€

Obviously I was addressing t_co since his banner post is "US media (pro government) bias." To that I said they should listen to Foxnews. In your case I don't have to give the same advice anymore, I know you're always hanging on to every Fox news "reporting" against Obama.

Enjoyed the article, but disappointed to note that it was written by an American on a US medium and not a Chinese. Self criticism is allowed in America - so Americans criticizing America are like Indians criticizing India - so common that it's not particularly noteworthy.

But if a Chinese wrote an article like this about China and it was allowed in China - that would be something. The fact that it cannot happen is hilarious.

Obviously I was addressing t_co since his banner post is "US media (pro government) bias." To that I said they should listen to Foxnews. In your case I don't have to give the same advice anymore, I know you're always hanging on to every Fox news "reporting" against Obama.

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Only an idiot makes assumptions about what another DFI member does, and only an anonymous coward would post such an opinion in this forum.

Enjoyed the article, but disappointed to note that it was written by an American on a US medium and not a Chinese. Self criticism is allowed in America - so Americans criticizing America are like Indians criticizing India - so common that it's not particularly noteworthy.

But if a Chinese wrote an article like this about China and it was allowed in China - that would be something. The fact that it cannot happen is hilarious.

Obviously I was addressing t_co since his banner post is "US media (pro government) bias." To that I said they should listen to Foxnews. In your case I don't have to give the same advice anymore, I know you're always hanging on to every Fox news "reporting" against Obama.

Click to expand...

I do not believe you have ever watched Fox News, but like others here who squawk about it you only believe what somebody else has told you.

In fact, Fox News has several people who will defend Obama consistently, Bob Beckle and Juan Williams being two.

Conservatives have for years attempted to put our finger upon precisely why Barack Obama strikes us as queer in precisely the way he does. There is an alienness about him, which in the fever swamps is expressed in all that ridiculous Kenyan-Muslim hokum, but his citizen-of-the-world shtick is strictly sophomore year â€” the great globalist does not even speak a foreign language. Obama has been called many things â€” radical, socialist â€” labels that may have him dead to rights at the phylum level but not down at his genus or species. His social circle includes an alarming number of authentic radicals, but the presidentâ€™s politics are utterly conventional managerial liberalism. His manner is aloof, but he is too plainly a child of the middle class to succumb to the regal pretensions that the Kennedys suffered from, even if his household entourage does resemble the Ringling Bros. Circus as reimagined by Imelda Marcos when it moves about from Kailua Beach to Blue Heron Farm. Not a dictator under the red flag, not a would-be king, President Obama is nonetheless something new to the American experience, and troubling.

It is not simply the content of his political agenda, which, though wretched, is a good deal less ambitious than was Woodrow Wilsonâ€™s or Richard Nixonâ€™s. Barack Obama did not invent managerial liberalism, nor has he contributed any new ideas to it. He is, in fact, a strangely incurious man. Unlike Ronald Reagan, to whom he likes to be compared, President Obama shows no signs of having expended any effort on big thinkers or big ideas. President Reaganâ€™s guiding lights were theorists such as F. A. Hayek and Thomas Paine; Obamaâ€™s most important influences have been tacticians such as Abner Mikva, bush-league propagandists like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and his beloved community organizers. Far from being the intellectual hostage of far-left ideologues, President Obama does not appear to have the intellectual energy even to digest their ideas, much less to implement them. This is not to say that he is an unintelligent man. He is a man with a first-class education and a business-class mind, a sort of inverse autodidact whose intellectual pedigree is an order of magnitude more impressive than his intellect.

The result of this is his utterly predictable approach to domestic politics: appoint a panel of credentialed experts. His faith in the powers of pedigreed professionals is apparently absolute.